A Wake Up Call
by MarieQuiteContrarie
Summary: Post 4B finale AU. Rumple remains in statis and has been transferred to the hospital where Henry helps Belle try to reach him. Part 2 of EmptyHeart!Verse, this story follows the events of Matters of the Heart, which may or may not be read first. Author's Notes: Please enjoy and let me know your thoughts. I do not own Once Upon A Time.


_"All you'll have is an empty heart and a chipped cup." – Belle, Skin Deep, Season 1, Episode 12_

"Go on. What are you waiting for?"

Belle blinked at Henry, her cerulean eyes huge in her drawn, tired face. The boy was uncannily perceptive, a talent he'd inherited from his grandfather. Right now she wished his knowing gaze to be elsewhere. Anywhere but centered on her.

What _was_ she waiting for?

Two months. Two months and no change. Searching, reading, studying, poring over every magical text and spellbook she could find. Rummaging through the pawnshop's vast collection of artifacts looking for something, anything that could bring Rum back to her. She wanted to be the hero, _his_ hero. But she'd come up empty.

While the Charmings, Killian, and Regina tried to deal with Emma, Belle and Henry had chosen to stay close to Rumple's side.

They had transferred him from the small bed at the shop to Storybrooke Hospital, where he remained under the watchful eye of Doctor Whale.

Still he lay in the hospital bed, alive but unconscious as the world spun on. Sunlight spilled through the window and Belle surveyed the light with a loathsome glare. Irrational a thought though it was, she hated the sun for daring to rise and set while she and her love were frozen in time, waiting for a miracle. Together but not. Fate was a cruel mistress—hadn't they spent enough time apart?

Belle stroked her hand down his lightly bearded cheek, lathering it with shaving soap as she prepared to shave his beloved face. It calmed and quieted the turbulence in her soul to care for him in this simple way. Besides, she knew how much he hated looking unkempt, as much as he was unaware of it now.

"Belle." Henry was insistent. "Put down the razor and do it."

Bent on her task of gliding the blade along Rum's face in long, slow strokes, she hummed to herself, ignoring her adopted grandson.

"Belle!" That stubborn boy would just not be dissuaded.

She paused briefly in her ministrations. "Henry, what if it doesn't work?"

"Then we keep trying. We find another way. What have we got to lose?"

"How can you ask me that?" Dropping the blade, she rounded on him defensively.

He stared at her as understanding dawned. "You're afraid."

She nodded, mute, wrapping her arms around herself to ward against the chill creeping over her skin.

"The Apprentice said Grandpa's heart could heal if the strength was there. Before he saved us from Pan, Grandpa said _you_ made him stronger. You are his strength," Henry insisted.

"Rum," she sighed, running her fingertips over his closed eyelids. "I'm afraid."

* * *

"Belle," he whispered, "I'm afraid."

Stasis. It was a broken record of his worst nightmares.

Just because he wasn't conscious didn't mean he couldn't feel. He was drowning, clawing for purchase, desperate to drag oxygen into his lifeless lungs. God, the pain. He couldn't take the pain.

Following his suicide to save Storybrooke from Pan, he'd suffered terrible torment in the Vault of the Dark One, surrounded by the shrieks of other desperate souls who had gone before him. Then there was the agony of being abused by Zelena, absorbing the mind and soul of his son into his own body and forced by his own dagger to do the unthinkable. But this torture? It rolled all those traumas and wrong decisions into one continuous, horrific nightmare.

Here, he relived every atrocity he had ever committed. Here, Bae died every day and he was powerless to stop it. Here, Belle banished him from her presence with the loathsome dagger, denying him the salvation of her love again and again. He shrank back as waves of agony wash over him. He prayed for death to carry him into oblivion. Surely hell itself could not be this bad.

But the worst? The worst was hearing her cry out to him from the other side. Asking him to live, to love her. Dimly he felt her stretch out beside him, her faint scent of musk and roses ghosting over his nostrils, the hint of auburn curls tickling his neck.

She was light and beauty and goodness. He did not deserve her.

His mind screamed at her to go, to continue with life, to set out with Will. A hero's journey, filled with adventure and travels throughout this world and all the realms. A life where the stories his Belle loved to read could come true. But his traitorous heart begged for her to stay. Stay. Love me. Please don't leave me.

He had needed to hear her say the words. He needed to know that if he couldn't be a good man that she would love him still. And like the selfish, cowardly bastard that he was, he had pushed her to the brink of sanity, doing unspeakable evil.

"Will you still love me?"

"Rumple! Rumple! Rumple!" He heard Belle begging, raging, sobbing for him to wake up. And he tried. Oh, he tried to get back to her.

Her cries murdered his empty heart and he choked on her screams.

He had lost her. And now he was lost. It was too late.

* * *

What if it was too late? For the first time, Belle confronted the possibility that Rum might not awaken.

But Henry wasn't giving up. "Why are you afraid? Belle, you're Beauty. He's the Beast. It's true love. You're making it so much more complicated than it needs to be."

Henry. The Truest Believer. And now the Author. The only one who had relinquished his power to allow everyone to make their own choices, to decide their own fates.

"What if we're not True Love?" She gave voice to the fear that had plagued her all these long, lonely months. "What if everyone else is right and we're wrong? I failed the first time I tried to reach him through a kiss. If it doesn't work…." she faltered, her voice cracking…"How, how will I bear it?"

"No one decides your fate but you, remember? The fact that you want so badly for it to be True Love means that it is." Henry placed a comforting arm around her shaking shoulders. He then turned her to face him and stared boldly into her defeated face.

"Do you love him?" he asked.

"You know I do."

"Do you still believe in him?"

"I've never stopped."

"Then there's hope."

Belle sighed. She longed so much for Henry's confidence. Could it be this easy? After all the pain, disappointments, and failures? True Love's Kiss had started to work in the Dark Castle…but now the Dark One was gone. And this wasn't the Enchanted Forest. This time would a kiss— _her kiss_ —be enough? They had needed the power of the Sorcerer's Hat and the Apprentice to banish that foe from Rumple's heart. Maybe it was stupid—she should be grateful he was here with her at all—but something in her had always believed that she, Belle, would be the one to save her True Love from the Beast within. The dark Beast that tore Rumplestiltzkin, the man, apart from the inside out.

Her pride was wounded; her own delusions of heroism were exactly that. Who was she to save anyone, let alone a wizard of Rumple's formidable power? He was _her_ strength, _her_ confidence, _her_ heart. When no one else had believed in her intelligence and abilities, he had swelled with satisfaction at her every idea and accomplishment.

But now, now he needed her. Would she fail him when it mattered most?

Henry was right. She had to try.

She peered closely at Rum's face. Then her heart jumped into her throat—did his eyelashes flutter just then, or was that a trick of the shadows?

Rummaging through the handbag at her feet, she retrieved their chipped cup, gently running her finger over its irregular edge. "You know Henry, no matter how much this thing's been through it has survived—just like our love."

Making a sudden decision, she placed the cup on Rum's chest. Drawing his hand up to curve around the porcelain, she interlaced her fingers with his so they cradled it together in their joined hands.

Henry nodded, encouraging her.

Gently, carefully, Belle pressed her lips to Rumple's, the familiar curve of his mouth mixing with the saltiness of her tears. "I love you," she whispered.

And she waited. Nothing.

She kissed him again, still clutching the cup in their hands. "Rum. Please."

Distraught, she tried once more, punishing his lips with the insistence of her kiss. "Rumple!" Moaning, she dropped the cup, running frantic hands over his face. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, bruising him as she shook him, rattling her own ribs. Finally she slapped him, a hard, stinging imprint across his right cheek.

Nothing. Nothing was happening.

Belle had failed. She had failed to revive her True Love.

Broken, she wailed, clutching at his thin blue hospital garments. For long moments she wept against his heart, her despair beyond anything she had ever known. Her Beast was gone. He was really and truly gone.

Vaguely, she felt Henry's run his fingers over her hair in an attempt to comfort her as she murmured her lover's name over and over in litany of agony.

"No!" Blinded by her grief, she twisted away from Henry's hand.

"Hey." A low rumble came from the bed and her gaze flew to Rumple's face, twin pools of blue widened in disbelief. It wasn't Henry running his hands through her curls.

It was Rumple.

He was awake.

True Love had won.

"Hey," she stammered back as he blinked at her. "Rumple?" she knuckled away tears, peering into his eyes for a sign of awareness in his beautiful whiskey brown eyes.

"Yes, Belle. It's me," he said, rubbing absently at his offended cheek.

"I hit you. I'm so sorry." She was laughing and crying, hysterical in her joy. Her lips were everywhere as she pressed kisses to his brow, his nose, his neck. He smiled faintly, reveling in the softness of her mouth and the wetness of her tears.

"'It's ok," he slurred, his lids drifting closed.

"Belle?" He opened his eyes to look at her again, and she saw that they were filled with tears. "I love you, too."

One on each side, Belle and Henry squeezed Rumple's hands as he fell back into slumber. But now his breathing was deep, his heart rate steady. It was a healing sleep and Belle heaved a happy sigh as Henry left the room, in search of Doctor Whale.

And for the first time in too long, hope sprang to life, blooming in Belle's heart like a shining red rose.


End file.
